Bosnia Ex-Governors Condemn Meddling in Komsic Election

Three former High Represenatives to Bosnia, Carl Bildt, Paddy Ashdown, and Christian Schwarz-Schilling, expressed their concern in an open letter to EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini on Thursday over Croatian attempts to dispute the legitimacy of the election of Zeljko Komsic as the Bosnian Croat member of the state's tripartite presidency.

Croatia's Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic have criticised the election of Komsic as the Croat representative on the three-member presidency, saying he does not represent the Bosnian Croat people, as BIRN previously reported.

Bosnian Croat parties claim that under the current rules, Bosniaks can outvote Croats based on their sheer number of voters, and thus effectively get to elect the Croat member of the presidency

According to the three former High Representatives, those against his appointment are misusing a landmark case brought by Bosnian Croat politician Bozo Ljubic, who complained in 2016 that the electoral mechanism to establish the House of Peoples in the Federation entity violated the principle of equality enshrined in the Dayton Agreement that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

The former High Representatives say this verdict is not relevant in this case, as it applies to the House of People in the Federation entity and not to the state presidency.

"The misinformed narrative about the Ljubic case is being used as an argument against the legitimately elected Croat member of Bosnian presidency, Zeljko Komsic. The HDZ representatives from Croatia, together with [Dragan] Covic, leader of the HDZ, claim the election was illegitimate and unconstitutional," the letter notes.

The Constitutional Court ruling found that a law in the Federation...